Tag: wedding photography tips

Aim for best quality

As a pro wedding photographer, it is extremely important for you to make sure that you aim for the best looking and for the best quality of pictures all of the time. Aside from your obvious techniques as well as shooting skills as a wedding photographer, you have to take note of the fact that your wedding photography clients will set the standards of a truly professional wedding photographer’s output based on the kind of photo quality that you are able to bring in to the table when it all comes down to it.

You need to always aim for nothing but the best of the best or you might end up falling short of your clients’ preconceived (although understandable) notions of what every wedding photographer’s work should be like in the end of it all. In order for you to make sure that you are always able to do right by your clients and to be able to deliver quality every single time, you need to make sure that you get to shoot all of your photos in RAW as much as possible.

Why RAW stands out

RAW is basically a kind of image format that really gets to stand out from the rest of all of the other formats because it is something that records and saves all of the original data that comes along with the moment that the pictures were actually shot. This is something that can turn out to be tremendously impressive because there is no other format out there that is able to promise as such or even come close to what RAW can potentially provide to you and to the pictures that you produce as a wedding photographer. The truth of the matter is that there an entire plethora of info and detail that go into it. That is technically something quite interesting and valuable beyond compare. Wedding photographers London from all over the world should opt to shoot their images in RAW and for a fairly good reason. Quality should always come up on top of everything else.

Takes a lot of the memory space

The only down side to shooting in RAW is the fact that it tends to really hog a lot of the memory space that you may have. Because of this, you need to make sure that you don’t ever run out of memory space as much as possible. This is something that you will be able to easily remedy by preparing more than enough memory cards and memory space than you could ever need. When you come to think about it though, it really is quite a small price to pay compared to the great results that you are able to get out of the pictures that you shoot as a wedding photographer. You need to make it a point to really get to take care of your memory cards all of the time so that they will always be in top shape when you are shooting weddings. One memory card out of commission can prove to have disastrous results especially when you only have just enough for the wedding photography shoot.

Take advantage of social media

As a wedding photographer who is enterprising and who doesn’t really have a lot of things to work with initially, you should not disregard the power and the advantage that social media will be able to give out to you and to your business. This is something that you should utilize and really make the best use of as much as possible. Take advantage of the free marketing platform that social media hands out to you freely and quite easily. It is something that will really get your career as a wedding photographer to take off to new heights that you wouldn’t imagine would be quite possible when it all comes down to it.

There have been so many other businesses and practicing professionals who have gone before you who have had success because of the fact that they took advantage of social media and they have had the added advantage of years and years ahead of their competition when it all comes down to it. There really is no reason why you shouldn’t jump in and join the bandwagon. Everyone has been doing it and mainly because of the mere fact that it is something that is just so effective and so reliable. At the end of the day, this is no mere marketing fad alone.

Reach out to potential clients

Social media really lets you reach out to your potential clients in something as easy and in something as convenient as the mere touch of a button. That is something virtually unheard of in the past but it is pretty much a huge part of our reality these days. Don’t bury your head in the sand and miss out on all of the opportunities that social media has to offer out to you and to your career as a wedding photographer.

Social media is pretty great because when you come to think about it, you get access to a world class marketing platform that has already been market tested and proven to work pretty well every single time for as long as you are able to do all of the right things in making it work for your advantage. The best part out of all of this is the fact that social media is something that is basically for free. What this means or how this translates to you as a Lancashire wedding photographer is that you don’t have to reach in and take a huge chunk out of your finances as a wedding photographer to get things rolling.

Market through social media

You don’t have to go broke just to market yourself well because social media is a marketing platform that will allow you to market yourself for free. What’s really great about social media is that you don’t have to spend too much time on it, either. You only need to spend roughly around a few minutes of every day to update and to post industry related content on your accounts as well as reply to any inquiries and that is pretty much about it. It won’t take up too much of your time or efforts.

Keep in a secure location

A great wedding photographer knows the wisdom and knowledge behind the practice of making sure that the memory cards are always well taken care of and safely kept in a secure location and in the best possible circumstances all of the time. Every seasoned wedding photographer out there will tell you a thing or two about horror stories related to formatting issues that are usually common in memory cards. There is nothing worse than being caught right in the middle of a wedding photography shoot only to find out that the memory card that you have in your camera suddenly gets corrupted. This means that you will potentially lose hours and hours of work.

You will not be able to rewind the wedding so that you can go back and recapture the images that you need to include in your wedding photo album and this can turn out to have tragic results. It can be extremely damaging to you and to your career as a wedding photographer. More than that, how it will turn out is that you will end up letting your clients down. When it all comes down to it, they have entrusted you with the most important day in their lives. This is a huge responsibility that you should treat with care and something that you should learn how to value immensely. If you don’t take care of your memory cards, you are putting everything at risk. Suffice it to say, this is not the kind of situation that you would like to get caught up in at the end of the day and it is something that you should make sure that you are able to ultimately avoid, if you can help it.

Wipe out data

If can be particularly annoying if something happens to your memory cards while you are mid-shoot as the official wedding photographer of a certain wedding. It will put you out of sorts, delay your shoot itinerary, and basically disrupt your schedule altogether. It is something that you should take care of before it even happens. Make a routine out of wiping your data off of your memory cards all of the time. Don’t be negligent enough to just resorting to storing images in your memory cards over a long period of time. This kind of practice will easily be able to more or less put all of your memory cards at risk. That is something that you really need to be extra mindful of and something that you need to be extra careful with as a wedding photographer waterford.

Store in a special case

Make it a point to really store all of your memory cards in a special case or something that is fairly protective so that you will be able to protect it from any external damages such as scratching, breaking off, and the like. This can happen if you just shove your memory cards in your jeans pockets, throw them in with the rest of your bigger gear, and the like. These cards are sensitive and you need to employ extra care in handling them.

There will be a lot of challenges that you will get to come across as a wedding photographer.

You need to prepare yourself, your equipment, as well as the kind of mind set that you are able to bring to the photo shoot if you would like to make sure that this is something that you will really be able to do the right way at the end of the day. You also need to have a certain knack for managing people and crowds in particular. If you are someone who is a bit shy and you are not really all that used to speaking up in front of a lot of people, you will need to change this kind of trait and learn how to face things and events head on.

Learn how you will be able to assert yourself and what you are trying to say without coming on too strong or without coming in being a little too authoritative. This is a difficult to balance especially for someone who is still quite new as a wedding photographer but over time, you will be able to figure this out for as long as you are willing to learn or willing to change.

The point of the matter is that there will always be people who will try to take their own photos and try to document the wedding in their own way. It wouldn’t be fair if you don’t let them do so. What you can do so that they don’t end up interrupting your wedding photo shoot and your itinerary as an essex wedding photographer is to give them a few minutes in between takes to take their own photos. This way, they don’t end up getting in the way when it all comes down to it.

Make it a point to wear really comfortable shoes during the wedding photo shoot.

Your job as a wedding photographer is one of the most physically and mentally challenging ones and if you would like to be able to rise up to the occasion and keep up with the moments that you are trying to document, then you need to make sure that you are fitted out the right way and that includes the kind of shoes that you wear for the most part.

You need something that is comfortable and something that will more or less enable you to really run around and move around as much as you would like to so that you will be able to take all of the shots that you are aiming to take al throughout the wedding photo shoot. It may sound like a really tempting idea to reach out for a pair of gorgeous looking shoes with towering high heels because you think it looks good with the rest of your outfit but you should have the foresight to think about how you will feel all throughout the photo shoot. You will end up tired and grumpy and irritable because your feet hurt all the time.

Be equipped

Lighting can be tricky to deal with especially when you are still trying to find your footing around wedding photography. This is one of the first few things that you should go ahead and prioritize and learn first more than anything else though because lighting is something that can make or break a certain wedding photography shoot. The kind of lighting situation that you have or that you need to deal with in wedding photography will more or less show how the rest of the photos will turn out. That is why it is very important for you to make sure that you are able to really equip yourself all throughout the process. You need to know what the best ways are to manipulate lighting during a wedding photography and how to make them work out for your advantage.

Bounce the light

One basic principle of lighting that you should take note of is the fact that bouncing lights can actually be the perfect effects when you are aiming for a diffused kind of lighting. A narrow lighting source such as a lighting stand or a strobe light is something that can be quite difficult to diffuse if you don’t more or less have a few tricks up your sleeve. This may be a little hard to wrap your head around but when it all comes down to it, all that you will really need is just a matte surface and something that is preferably white, like a white wall, for example. Bounce the narrow light source off of that and you immediately get a diffused kind of lighting that is perfect for portraits because it is something that is broad and soft and it highlights all of the best features of someone’s face.

Another thing you need to know about lighting is that the common notion that shadows are always bad for the wedding photography shoot may not always be correct when it all comes down to it. If you want something that is multi-dimensional or something that has a lot of volume, shadow is a great thing for you to play around with during the wedding photography shoot.

Shadows aren’t always all that bad if you know how to use them all in the right context.

It is all a matter of being able to use it the right way and more or less being able to really set it up in all of the best angles so that you will be able to achieve what you are aiming to achieve. Volume can be really interesting and multi-faceted when they are applied well in the pictures that are being taken in the wedding photography shoot. Try to see if you will be able to practice the use of shadows and how you will be able to control them the right way so that they don’t end up being a little bit too overpowering or too controlling in your photos. It is all about moderation and techniques in the application of the lighting.

Asses lighting situation

You need to make sure that you are always able to assess what the lighting situation will be during your wedding photo shoots. There are a lot of things to consider and you need to make sure that you know exactly what you are getting into so that you will be able to make all of the necessary preparations for you to get the best possible looking photos throughout the entire process. A great wedding photographer always tries to test the waters by visiting the area ahead of time. You should be well informed enough to more or less go ahead and make sure that you are able to do the same when it all comes down to it.

It may seem like a bit of a stretch and it may require some amount of effort but surveying the area ahead of time and observing how the light elements come into play is something that will really make you improve in your shots and I your performance as a wedding photographer all at the same time. Try to visit the venue at the same time of the day that the wedding will be held because lighting can change depending on this. There is also the weather, the wind, and the setup of the place for you to consider when it all comes down to it so make sure that you are more or less able to check things like those out as well.

Make it a point to be a really “quiet” wedding photographer.

You don’t necessarily have to announce to the rest of the people in the venue that you are taking your photos. The camera tends to do that because of the clicking sound that usually accompanies it whenever you click through some photos. There is actually a way for you to be able to work around this. Most of the high quality cameras out there actually come along with a setting that quiets down the clicking noise whenever you take your shot. A lot of people can get nervous when they feel as if they are being scrutinized by the camera all of the time. Putting your camera on a quiet setting can really work to your advantage as a wedding photographer. Through this, you will be able to take out and document authentic looking expressions and really capture the essence of the moment without taking away anything from it through startling the people that you are more or less taking photos of at the end of the day.

Minimize use of flash

Another thing that you should also try to implement as a wedding photographer is to minimize the use of flash photography, if you can help it. There are some other instances out there wherein it would not be possible for you to more or less avoid the use of the flash but as much as possible, you should make it a point to try to go ahead and use it sparingly. You should also try to use strobe lights in your setup if you are dealing with low light settings because they provide better illumination that just the flash.